witness testimony:PSYCHOLOGICAL, INVESTIGATIVE AND EVIDENTIAL PERSPECTIVES
Edited by Anthony Heaton-Armstrong, Eric Shepherd, Gisli Gudjonsson and David Wolchover / Oxford University Press /
RRP £49.95 / 496 pages
The role of the criminal justice system must be to find the truth. Quite what that “truth” means has and continues to be the subject of much debate. Some confuse truth with proof. An analysis of the law of evidence only takes us as far as establishing how much can be proven, but proof does not always equate to truth. A person will be acquitted if the prosecution has failed to prove the case but it does not follow that that acquittal contains within it the truth of what happened.
This book, edited by a team of eminent people in their fields, develops a unique analysis of the way our adversarial system works and guides the reader through a series of closely argued sections designed to produce clear, cogent, accurate and reliable evidence.
Beginning with psychological perspectives, a series of writers, principally the respected Gisli Gudjonsson, deal with a range of examples where evidence might be undermined by psychiatric conditions,
